This paper delves into a rendezvous scenario involving a chaser and a target spacecraft, focusing on the application of Model Predictive Control (MPC) to design a controller capable of guiding the chaser toward the target. The operational principle of spacecraft thrusters, requiring a minimum activation time that leads to the existence of a control deadband, introduces mixed-integer constraints into the optimization, posing a considerable computational challenge due to the exponential complexity on the number of integer constraints. We address this complexity by presenting two solver algorithms that efficiently approximate the optimal solution in significantly less time than standard solvers, making them well-suited for real-time applications.

翻译：本文深入研究了追踪航天器与目标航天器的交会场景，重点探讨了应用模型预测控制（MPC）来设计一种能够引导追踪器飞向目标的控制器。航天器推力器的工作原理要求一个最小激活时间，这导致了控制死区的存在，从而将混合整数约束引入了优化问题。由于整数约束数量带来的指数级复杂度，这构成了巨大的计算挑战。我们通过提出两种求解器算法来解决这一复杂度，这些算法能够以远少于标准求解器的时间高效逼近最优解，从而使其非常适合于实时应用。